“Most of the shadows of life are caused by standing in our own sunshine.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Poet)

No matter who you are or what goals you have, your biggest obstacle in life is you.

You are your own worst enemy.

You are your biggest critic.

Part of this is because our brains are wired to value negative information twelve times more than positive information.

That’s right, negative information is stored in your long-term memory bank almost immediately, while positive information has to be held in your awareness for up to twelve seconds to be remembered long-term.

This is called negativity bias, and it affects all us.

It causes us to hold on to, ruminate on, and recall negative experiences more quickly.

It’s a self-loathing maneuver that only serves to undermine our progress and keep us stuck in bad habits.

They then explain this automatic choice as being an instinct, or “gut response”, even though these choices were part of a self-sabotage mission.

“Not only is familiarity a maladaptive guide to what’s beneficial, it can lead to choices that actually exacerbate stress — increasing the likelihood of more poor judgments, and then more, in a destructive cycle of self-defeating actions.”

Not just the familiar or habitual, but self-perception plays a role in whether we sabotage our own success or not.

Research in Science Daily discusses how self-perception around flexibility of abilities plays a key role in determining who would embrace success and who would retreat into self-sabotage.

In this research, it was determined that those that felt as though their abilities in the workplace were fixed or unchangeable would become anxious in the face of impending success and retreat from opportunity, with a decrease in their overall work performance.

Those who believed they could adapt, and that their ability could change, were less prone to self-defeatism and moved forward to success more easily.

Keep your victories and the mindset you used to achieve them front and center.

Remind yourself of them often.

Especially when you have a choice to make.

Especially when you feel fear.

This is something you have to own in your life if you want to reach any level of success.

It’s work that’s well worth it.

3. Embrace uncertainty to reduce stress.

Most often, people sabotage themselves, not because they’re afraid of failing, but because they’re afraid of succeeding.

They’re afraid of losing their current identity.

They’ve become attached to who they are, whether it’s working for them or not, and refuse to change.

These people will make great progress toward a goal and then, suddenly, right before achieving it, they’ll pull back.

Why?

The reason these people pull back is because they’re more comfortable with their past selves than their future selves.

They’re uncertain of who they will become (and uncertain if they live up to who they will become) so they fail on purpose.

They fail in favor of staying comfortable with who they are.

They fail because it’s easier for them to be unhappy than uncertain.

That’s right — people choose to stay unhappy.

They choose to be unhappy and to stay unhappy — because it’s cozy for them.

And not in a satisfying and peaceful cozy, but in a tolerable, static state of moderate misery.

Sustainable unhappiness.

By choice.

Because staying the same is comfortable.

It requires no effort.

And it keeps you in the known.

It also keeps you from success forever.

If you can’t tolerate uncertainty, wave goodbye to success and happiness forever — it’s never going to happen.

This mindset will keep you in a loop of self-sabotage — indefinitely.

The only way to prevent self-sabotage is to practice choosing uncertainty over unhappiness, over and over again until it’s a habit.

The only way to do this is to repeatedly put yourself in challenging situations.

Challenging situations that you choose and that have a positive outcome on the other end of them.

This will help you get comfortable with being uncomfortable.

This will help you start choosing uncertainty over unhappiness, which will lead to bigger and bigger successes in your life.

People are hardwired with a negativity bias. But your wiring doesn’t stay the same forever, unless you let it. In fact, you can actively change your brain to adopt a mindset for success. This means choosing to believe in yourself and being your biggest fan. It means assessing your history of failures and your successes and taking a hard look at your patterns of behavior that block your success. It means seeking out challenges that stretch you out of your comfort zone and force you into uncertainty, where all you have to rely on is your own belief in yourself.

To learn more about how to stop sabotaging yourself and achieve success, and to get instant access to exclusive training videos, case studies, insider documents, and my private online network, get on the Escape Plan wait list.